


come into the night

by fated_addiction



Category: The Following
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire tells herself: I am going to die. I am going <i>tonight</i>. This is circumstance. She is no longer a bride. (Set between <i>The End is Near</i>/<i>The Final Chapter</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	come into the night

"It's only fitting," he keeps saying, or keeps _trying_ to say -- his breathing is labored, his mouth puckered and off-key.

Claire takes note. He favors his side. She can fight back if she flails her legs out. They're too long as it is. Her cuffs are tight. It's cold. Oh, he _would_ try to drown her and for whatever reason, that makes her angry and panicked.

"It's only fitting," he says once more, and then he is at the wheel of the boat, back to her. She hears him chuckle: "That you die this way," he says too. She thinks briefly -- _ryan_ \-- and wonders if he's probably thinking of the same thing.

Probably.

She remembers hating the boat.

 

 

 

Joe wanted a son. Joe did not want a daughter. She was idealistic enough to laugh it off. At the beginning of their marriage, she loved him and she brushed through it all, saying, "I just want a healthy baby. I just want a healthy family."

He loved that. He always loved that. These were the things that would push him to curl around her. It would be about his knee jutting into the back of her thigh. It would be about his palm pressed against her belly, or how his fingers slowly and then suddenly would start to slide between the junction of her thighs. She would laugh and sigh and press back against him, right into his nails dragging lightly against her clitoris, right into his thumb pressing to tease. He made her feel shapeless. He was too good at that.

But he would say things like, "Sons maintain legacies."

She would roll her eyes. "You're bizarrely attached to the wrong century, you idiot."

His smiles were always mysterious and she should have known about it all, even then.

"I only have enough for you," he'd reply, and it was serious, maybe too enigmatic for her -- it was always easy to blush and laugh it off.

There is no real reason as to why Ryan fits into any of this.

She was in love.

 

 

 

Claire tells herself:

I am going to die. I am going _tonight_.

This is circumstance. She is no longer a bride. She understands that she is breaking from some kind of reality; she watches Joe at the helm, hunching further over the wheel. She would like to think that she still has pleasant memories of him this way. When there was sun and sky and the water was that cheap, sharp green and blue -- "Too much sea-glass!" he'd say, and then laugh, and then Claire would snap ( _playfully_ ) about coeds and cheap lines.

"How did we get here?" she calls out and her voice drowns out. The motor rolls and putters. If it wasn't dark, she would pretend to know that Joe's knuckles were white. "Really, Joe," she calls again. "I think -- I think you owe me that much," she says. "Since you're going to kill me. Since Joey's gone. I just need to know."

He doesn't answer. (Of course, he doesn't answer.) He turns the boat off. The motor chokes. The boat lurches forward. Her wrists pull at the pole he's cuffed her to and then there's silence.

It's the sky that she notices, after. There are no stars. She doesn't know why she expects stars. Her eyes blur too and the sky seems to overwhelm her. It feels bleak. Maybe it's supposed to feel bleak. She may hate him for this too.

"Joe," she says.

"I don't know," he cuts her off. There's a sigh. "I don't know."

"Were you even going to keep me alive?"

He meets her gaze. Or she meets his. His eyes are wide and round. His mouth opens. It closes after.

"Do you love him?" he asks.

"I love my son," she says. "I would do anything for him."

"Oh, Oedipus," he sighs. "Lucky Oedipus."

She snorts. "Really though?"

"I love my son," he says. "He was something good -- no, he was the best part of us both. The ease of forgiveness too -- why couldn't I at _least_ touch that, Claire?"

It's frightening, truly frightening that there are bits and pieces of him that are so childlike in processing. For a man that was, _is_ revered for sheer brilliance. She wonders if she were guilt of that too; reverence is to love, after all.

But she doesn't hate him, maybe it's pity. Maybe it's something in between. What she knows is that she cannot get it back, whatever it was that she had for him and maybe for her, maybe for them Ryan was whatever bit of humanity it was supposed to be. She hates herself for thinking that.

"I am going to die," she says.

He doesn't blink. He rolls over to his knees. "Yes," he says.

"What are you going to do?"

She's tired. She's too tired to be sick; her eyes dart to his hands. They clutch at his stomach. Then they curl.

"Strangle me?" she asks, or doesn't. She chokes on a laugh. Her eyes water. "Drowning seems too obvious."

"And how would you like to die?"

His amusement is soft. But it's there. Her death is something affection, suddenly.

She smiles with her teeth. It's the last that she has.

"Ripping you apart."

 

 

 

Their last night on the boat, Joe comes inside of her and she feels sated, maybe too sated, her fingers pulling at his hair. His teeth connect at her throat and he's laughing over her skin.

"I love you, you know," he says, and it's serious, strangely serious only in that way that Joe seems to go about it. He bites at her chin and she considers his tone: is he trying to say something more or is it another one of those puzzles.

"I know," she still says. She shifts and rests on an elbow. Her legs are tangled in his. "You tell me all the time," she teases gently.

He smiles with his teeth. There is nothing more frightening than his smile (and privately, she has -- will always think this; you cannot trust this man's smile, her friends said and beyond that it'll return as whispers, as _we told her_ ) but she tells herself, over and over and over again, that she loves.

"But I really love you," he murmurs.

She watches him stare. It's aimless -- something in the room, the way the light from their window hits the sheets and the white of the walls. She swallows.

"I think I've only always loved you."

 

 

 

He slumps when he is closer.

His hand fumbles at his jacket. Joe is clumsy -- Claire doesn't understand a clumsy Joe -- and hisses when he finally reveals a small carrying case.

He tosses it onto the floor between the two of them.

"Drugs?" she croaks, maybe from screaming. She doesn't remember screaming anymore. Her wrist hangs almost limply over her head, her hair sticking to her skin. Her curls are wild and peek into her throat.

"No," he says. "Call it insurance."

She tries to roll her eyes. "Criminal mastermind, you are not."

The corner of his mouth twists. She is still waiting for those moments; again, the moments where their entire life flashes before her, together and apart; to mull over those decisions seem so terrible all of the sudden, but not cruel; then, maybe later, she might think of Ryan and feel okay again, even if that is just as screwed up and fleeting as everything else.

The moments aren't coming and she watches Joe, almost absently, as he pushes himself into his knees. He moves slowly, but not carefully and there isn't a sound around him, just the juxtaposition between his breathing and hers.

He pulls at the zipper.

"I wanted this to work."

She coughs. She can't laugh. She spies the syringe and the small, double vials. He picks one up.

"Truly," he says.

Her eyes feel like they're going to burn first.

"You made your choices," she says, and her voice starts to shake. She sees herself sitting that first day of his trial. "How is it that you can't understand that much, at the very least?"

"But I do," he murmurs.

The light hits the syringe. His nails tap against the glass.

"Best of all."

She shakes her head.

"You're a child," she manages. "A complete and utter --"

"I am a lot of things, Claire," and he pulls out the syringe from its holder, flicking it to life. His eyes are bright, but he doesn't smile. She feels something change and he looks _hungry_ and she finds herself fascinated, despite it all.

He shifts closer.

"Don't," she says tiredly. "Don't."

"You know what's coming," he coaxes.

Claire is silent.

And when he's closer, he remains on his knees, by her side, his fingers to push up the sleeve of her blouse. No longer is about how awkward the position is, or how the cuff is pulling at her skin; he flicks his fingers forward, rubbing them over a vein. She bites her lip; he bites his lip.

"This is not your fault." This isn't the last time he says this. His mouth grazes her forehead, but she doesn't cry. "I won't let you have that," he tells her. "You can't."

"If you weren't you," she says, but doesn't finish. Her voice is sleepy. The water comes rushing to her ears and her head starts to slump, her hair clustering into her shoulder and against her arm.

Joe slides his fingers through her hair.

Claire remembers feeling the needle break skin.

 

 

 

The wedding party is small. There are orchids littering the garden space; too much purple, too much white.

Joe presses his fingers into her hip as they talk separately to her parents. The music shadows their small group out. Her mother's eyes are rimmed and wet. Her father shakes Joe's hand again with a laugh.

"We're incredibly happy to have you," he says.


End file.
